Let’s not forget the frictionless enablement of spectacular ransomware enterprises, and the glorious enrichment of dangerous actors with stolen funds. It’s a small price to pay for all this… freedom?
It also enabled about $60+ million dollars to be donated to Ukraine and that's just one data point. Whether these other problems are a small price to pay will depend on who you are talking to. To the Ukrainians that benefited from these donations and to those that have food, weapons and shelter from these donations, it is most likely a small price to pay.
Perhaps a portion of these donations could have come from other sources if cryptocurrencies did not exist, but there isn't really a good way to quantify that, so I won't go into that discussion.
I was able to donate hundreds of dollars to Ukraine using the same credit card I use for everything else. What is special about crypto donations to Ukraine? I suspect that the fees of converting USD->BTC (or other crypto) and then the recipients converting back to UAH are higher than the <2% CC fee I paid. (I used a card with no foreign transaction fee.)
And with credit card, the donation recipient wouldn't be at risk of losing double digit percentages of the value donated if they didn't immediately cash out into fiat currency.
Maybe they finally realized they looked stupid after a decade of using Venezuela as an example of how crypto can help a country, even though crypto hasn't made anything better there.
